View the youtube video:
DEMONS
OF THE PRISON
There’s a person for every job. Once a week a truck comes to pick up your garbage, and you may think to yourself, ‘it’s a dirty job and somebody has got to do it.’ When you’re sitting down at a table in a restaurant are you the type of person who says to the nice young waitress (possibly a student paying her way through college) you’ve been waiting nearly ten minutes? Maybe you are the type of person who complains to your spouse, loudly as you exit, that the service was terrible. If so, then you probably have never worked in the food industry.
Poor Hannah Mitchell had to deal with these types on busy nights at the restaurant where she worked. If the food was taking too long, because Joey, the cook, was hung-over again, if the staff was short a waitress and Hannah had to take twice as many tables, all of these stresses would go unnoticed to the casual diner. Lost in conversation, they wouldn’t be aware of the crowd of people waiting to be seated and Hannah rushing to clear off a table, as one party left, to make room for another. The casual diner wouldn’t realize that Hannah was a trapped rat who can only find peace in the back room where the dishes are washed.
Byron, as he sorted the dishes, readied racks, and pushed them through the mouth of the large dishwashing machine, would observe Hannah, the small perky brunette, as she would whip out her phone to read the latest text message from her boyfriend, Steven, who played guitar and sang in a band. His words would always make Hannah smile, and Byron, a then nineteen year-old dropout, would witness it happening.
Byron had just moved out of his Mom’s mobile home to live with his father. He had kept few friends in East Hills and he missed Vicky, even though she wasn’t his girlfriend and she never would be. In those days he still thought she would have put a smile on his face as Steven did for Hannah. He rarely smiled anymore, with his haircut short, wearing his soiled work clothes, he no longer felt like himself. He kept quiet and few of the other employees talked to him.
Byron never received text messages from girls and Hannah was very lucky that she had someone there for her on busy nights. When she got out of work, restless and unable to sleep, she had someone to call. Byron had no one. He was especially aware of this on special occasions, such as the Fourth of July when he wished he had someone to celebrate the day with. After the big fireworks celebration, the dining room filled with people and the restaurant was short-staffed as usual.
Byron felt like all eyes were on him as he walked into the dining room, his black pants and shirt, filthy, carrying a bus pan. He shook with nervousness and sweat dripped from his pits. He hurried to clear off table fourteen and as he glanced at the front of the restaurant where the noise of chatting was like static, he thought he noticed a tall, punk-looking girl with dyed purple hair…
The bus pan slid from Byron’s grip, and nearly slid off the table, but he caught it and as he did so, he accidentally knocked over two half filled coffee mugs, which spilled on the booth seat, rolled down and broke. At that point several eyes were on him, and looking into the brown eyes of the tall, punk girl, he realized it was not Vicky. It wouldn’t have been, since Vicky lived in Penhaven and would have no reason to be in East Hills.
Embarrassed, Byron had to mop up the spill, and collect the broken shards, as a party of four guests stared from the doorway waiting for him to clear the table, and Hannah shot him a frustrated look.
It was a relief when the night finally ended and yet, Byron would rather stay in hiding in the dish-room than go home to his father and his father’s wife. They were both nice people, he knew, but his relationship with his father was awkward and the woman he had married was not like his mother. She was very humble, and soft-spoken, but Byron missed his Mom’s wild eccentricities.
On some nights, Byron’s mother would light incense, and she and her son would sit cross-legged. She would go through the breathing exercises with him. Other nights he ventured outside the trailer, often running into Vicky, who’d be smoking a cigarette and chatting with Rob.
Byron had only smoked cigarettes on three occasions with Rob and Vicky at the trailer park. At nineteen he could legally buy them for himself, and after work he decided he needed one badly. He would’ve loved to have a beer, but he was not twenty-one. He would have to have a cigarette and that was just the way it was.
He stopped by the seven-eleven and bought a pack of Camels and a disposable lighter. He smoked one after another as he walked the mile walk to his Dad’s house.
When he arrived, the dog barked and scratched at the door. Byron forced it open, loud, frustrated, he avoided the dog trying to jump on him. He stomped into his bedroom and the door slammed hard behind him. He took off his shoes. He threw his apron and hat onto his bed, and he opened the door back up again, to head for the shower. His dad was standing there, angry, his gray hair messed up.
“People sleep in this house!”
He was a short, pudgy man standing there in his pajamas.
“Don’t you realize how loud you are?”
Byron felt paralyzed with guilt as he hadn’t thought about waking anyone up. The cigarettes made him anxious and tense, and the dog jumping on him when he came in the door made him annoyed. He thought only of how nice it would be to shower, then to lock himself in his room and watch television.
“I had a rough night.”
“So?” Byron’s father said.
“Well, I wasn’t thinking about that.”
Face to face with his Dad and seeing into his sleepy irritated eyes, Byron saw that he didn’t understand. His father had no idea what a rough night meant.
“Every night, when you come in late, you slam the door, you cause Denny to bark…”
“It’s not my fault the Dog’s a frickin psycho!”
Byron felt anger boiling inside him like a pot on a stove. His Dad never approached him beforehand and talked about his habit of being noisy, he was never told to be quiet when coming home from work, never until this night. He didn’t see this confrontation coming, in fact he hadn’t talked to his father in days, as he always hid in his room and read comics.
“Don’t use language like that.”
“I said frickin.”
“IAN-Byron!”
More heat, and the pot was boiling harder.
“I’m Byron!”
“Well, you’re acting just like your brother!”
As Byron held in all his emotions, as he stifled tears, he felt a tightness in his chest and he knew he would be having an anxiety attack. He would have to calm down and breathe. He wasn’t getting anywhere with his father and he couldn’t argue any longer.
“Fine, I’ll be quieter.”
Byron’s Dad shook his head with relief as he walked down the hall back to his room.
Byron carefully closed the door to his bedroom. He pushed clothes aside, got on his bed, and lay down. He looked up at the ceiling; he rolled his eyes upward, and closed his eyelids. From underneath their lids, his eyes rolled frontward. He breathed deeply in, from down in his belly, then up to his chest, and as he breathed out he felt himself descending. He felt as if he was going down a great slide.
He was reminded of a time when he was a kid playing in the park with his friend Caitlin, who pushed him down the slide. A few months back he saw Cait, locking lips with Nick, his other friend from childhood, who was her ex-boyfriend. It was at a party and Byron was drinking. He had begun to ramble.
“Me and Mom were fighting and when I ran out the door I found Vicky!” Byron said as Cait (who had removed herself from Nick) sat with him on the couch, “When I needed Vicky she was there! She was there for me and we talked and she put her arm on my shoulder and told me about her friend and she knew what I was going through. She didn’t judge!”
“We don’t judge you, By. We just want you to be happy,” Cait said and gave Byron a hug.
Byron held onto the memory, wishing someone was there to comfort him as he slid faster down the slide and it became narrow. It was starting to become a frightening ride. He began to feel as if he was being forced down. He was spit out, as if out a large tube, he came out floating in the air, drifting down like a feather and when he opened his eyes he was in a dark prison cell.
He landed on his feet, and the cell was dark, save for stripes of light escaping from the narrow cracks between the black metal bars in front of him. He felt the walls around him and they were brick. He could smell the brick, like the walls of Millbrook Elementary School, which he’d gotten to smell up close when a bully once forced him to. He could smell the dirt he stood in. There was also a rusty pipe smell, like from the cellar at the old house he grew up in-from when his parents were together and his brother still lived at home. He was never allowed down cellar, but sometimes he would sneak down-there seemed to be so much to discover, things saved in boxes, old furniture, old toys.
There was not much room to walk around in the cell, the place was much bigger when he was a kid and it was a closet-the closet that Byron shared with his brother Ian in their bedroom when they were kids, which was fairly big (it was a walk-in). The wooden door had slits, so it was never completely dark, as long as there was light in the room that peaked in. It was another place that Byron liked to hide away in. His brother had comics and chapter books, with cool, scary pictures. He’d go in and rifle through them and create his own stories in his head.
“Stop going through my stuff, doofus, I’ll shut you in,” Ian said to him once, and Byron retorted, “Go ahead see if I care!”
Ian pushed his bureau over in front of the door; he tied the closet knobs together with shoelace in a tight Cub Scout knot. Although the bureau had blocked the light, Byron had a flashlight. Even though he was too young to be a scout he knew to always be prepared.
He was safe in the closet, with books and interesting things to keep his mind occupied. In fact, in his imagination, it wasn’t a closet at all; it was a prison cell that Evil Ian had locked him in, in the cellar of the castle of his little brother Evil Byron. All he needed to do was find the hidden passage that led him out and he would be free.
He wasn’t a little kid anymore, though, and now he was experiencing it for real. He was in the dungeon of the castle, and Dark Byron really was alive somewhere, but he would not meet him this night.
Goosebumps crept up on Byron’s skin, causing the hair on his arms to stand tall, as if frightened. Byron recalled being in his bed, and if he thought hard enough, he might have been able to go back. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to go back to his Father’s house. He felt much more comfortable in the prison, and he was curious to find the secret passage and where it led.
Byron turned and he pressed his right hand against the right wall. He knocked with his left hand and the brick was solid. He knocked on the back wall. He turned again and kicked the wall. He felt around like a blind man, and knocked all around the left side, until he found what he was looking for.
He pounded his fist and the brick slid back. He pounded again, as it scraped out it made a sound like chalk on a blackboard. It was almost loose and then one final tap pushed it out and smashed it. Through the gap, the edges scratched Byron’s wrist as he put his hand in. His palm began to warm up, as he clutched the burning knob and turned.
The wall slowly opened like a sliding door, behind it was a very large, hand-dug hole. Byron lifted his foot, ducked his head and crawled in. Rocks fell and nearly hit him. He felt a large pebble knock his skull. He reached with his arms as if swimming, and he pulled himself upward.
He could not see, but if the tunnel collapsed, choking him in dirt, he would only wake up from the dream. He would open his eyes and be in the bedroom of his father’s house looking up at the ceiling, screaming, or out of breath and drenched in sweat. So he really had nothing to fear in going wherever the path would take him.
Again he thought back to the playground in the park. Life was an adventure in those times. The little girl down the road was the princess, and he would protect her. He would lead the way to safety, down the large plastic tubular, play-tunnel. Coming to the end she would declare him her hero and he’d receive a peck on the cheek.
The adventure was gone from his life, but he was on his way to taking it back and when he did, he would not let go. When he got to the end, he’d keep going. There was nothing for him outside this dreamscape. He felt powerful. He had courage that he didn’t know he had anymore. He had the strength of an old sorcerer shining inside him and guiding him.
He crawled like a gopher, burrowing. He kept going as dirt fell into his hair like rain. His hands were becoming so black, layered with soil that made him feel as if he were wearing gloves. The swan song logo on his Led Zeppelin T-shirt would no longer be visible under the earthy crust he was swimming in.
As he pawed his way up and through, his vision would start to become clear again. There was light somewhere. He only needed to keep going, like on a hard night of working at the restaurant as the waitresses bussed their tables and added to the piles of dishes, he didn’t stop to think and be overwhelmed because he had to concentrate on his job. Just like then, he concentrated on the dig.
He stopped. He breathed hard and rapidly, gasping and then coughed. He felt like he was lying in mud as dirt was mixed with sweat. He had reached the end, and when he looked out, he saw a vast underground network. The walls of the cave were all stone and lined with torches so he could see it all. He looked down below to see his reflection in a river of cool, clean water.
He tried to arrange himself to a sitting position. He slipped out of the hole, stepping out with his left leg first. He leapt out and his sneakers hit the flowing rock bottom of the shallow reservoir. He stood ankle-deep, and shook off all the dirt. He crouched down and cupped his hands into the water and splashed his face and head. He squeezed the muck out of his hair, soaked his arms up to his elbows and scrubbed. He splashed his neck. He became clean enough to be comfortable and embark further.
He looked up at the stone ceiling and it was low- over his head in an arch. With a splash that echoed through the walls, he began to walk, wading through the water, passing entryways, but following straight ahead. He knew if he turned to follow one path he would become lost, and he was unarmed and unprepared for whatever things lurked around the corner. Forward was the path.
He dripped farther on and in the distance he could see a glimmer of metal. He rushed, nearly slipping and he passed under an archway. He stood within a chamber, where a set of metal shackles hung on the wall by chains. He took them in his hands and in examining them he could imagine them closed around his wrists, as he thought he could even feel his body stretched out like a tapestry hanging.
There was a spark of memory. He could see for several moments through the eyes of a prisoner. A man with a long beard, tired, dehydrated, his thoughts on the villagers and of his friend, the native girl Akela.
As he hung, barely able to breath, feeling as though he were being ripped apart, another man stood before him in the cold water. This was a man, he knew, who when his boat docked on new land, came with troops who slaughtered and enslaved the villagers claiming the land for his own.
The prisoner could barely see and when he closed his eyes, there were frightening images. The dark man held his beloved Akela by the wrist. Akela, who was a dark-skinned beauty he met and befriended on his journey for knowledge, Akela, who gave him shelter amongst her tribe, Akela who sewed a fine grip around the handle of the man’s sword using the hide of a native beast.
The prisoner jerked his eyes open unable to relive those cruel last moments, when he stood with his sword to defend Akela and the evil man clutched his hand around her neck and cut her life short.
He heard her scream echo the chamber as if she were there beyond the walls. The evil man smiled, with vicious eyes. The prisoner opened his mouth to speak and he wheezed trying to form words in his dry mouth.
“Torture me to death,” he began to speak, “and I shall take it. My spirit shall fly further than it ever has and after some time there will be a successor on the other side of the stone to resist you once more.”
The evil man said nothing. He simply turned his back. He made a gesture with his hand and the water rose to drown the prisoner, as he, the captor, walked off and was gone. The prisoner felt the coldness creep up his legs. His eyes closed and once again he was transported back to the time when he watched a gentle girl named Akela, someone who was dear to him, brought to silence. He released a part of himself from his body to join her, and another part he sent to meet his heir, to find its way to another man in another world, beyond the sacred stone.
All of this came to Byron in a flash and it was a revelation. In this dream world, he was the heir to some great power. He took his hand away from the shackle and when he turned his head, he noticed something in the bottom of the river. It was a long sharp piece of steel, with a fine animal hide along its hilt and around the handle. He picked it up and it was heavy. He wasn’t sure how to manipulate it, but it was his, and he would need it to come out of the cave alive.
In a dream it’s possible to travel to exotic locations, which you may have only seen in pictures. It’s remarkable the fact that such a thing is possible as wielding a mighty sword in a dark underground cavern of stone. Anything was possible for Byron, so he thought, and he thought that he would make the cold water around his feet disappear.
He held his sword out with his right hand, and with his left he made a gesture to drain the reservoir. He began to see a ripple, then more ripples formed and the water lowered under his feet like water in the bathtub being sucked down a drain. Slowly it all flowed back, only leaving traces of dampness in the cold rocky ground. Byron followed the dissipating water. He left the dungeon chamber and ventured to find a way out.
The flame light in the torches was too sparse to be sufficient enough to guide him and he didn’t know where he was going. As he walked step-by-step, he heard nothing, as if sound ceased to exist. He opened his mouth to give a call, but heard nothing until finally a clawing sound reached his ear. Many clawed feet were scratching about the rocky ground and there was a hissing, like from snakes.
He heard a male voice; it was garbled at first as if coming out of an old television or radio that was close to dying out. Then he heard a female voice and it was clear. He understood it.
“I’m just going to visit a friend!”
There was fury in her voice.
“I’ve never met this guy! Who is he?”
“He’s my friend!”
The voices were of his parents. He was thirteen when he heard the conversation. He had walked into the computer room to use the Internet. When they noticed his presence they left, retreated to the bedroom, locked the door and locked Byron to the truth. Many times his parents didn’t get along. It was not the first time for that, nor was it the first time his mother confronted him later to say that she may be separating from Byron’s father, but it was the first time that she followed through with it.
Byron felt the memory cripple him. He stood to fight whatever clawed monsters were making their way through the arched paths, but he was becoming weak with fear. His arm shook and he didn’t feel he could hold onto the sword any longer. He thought he might cry.
He saw three cracked, yellow nails, which were sharp and pointed, on the ends of dark green fingers. In the distance, he saw another scaly, three fingered hand. Other sets appeared from the other entryways. The things that crawled forward were like crawling infants, about the size of a little girl’s baby doll, but with enlarged heads. The ears were bat-like, and jutted along the side of the heads like the wings of a duck. They crawled along the walls and up the ceiling. Their eyes were pure black like marbles and were the size of golf-balls. Their mouths, although scaly like a reptile resembled wolf snouts, with teeth the size of Byron’s thumb set in brownish gums, which dripped with bluish liquid that was saliva.
He reached with his sword and skewered one of the wretched goblins above his head. He slid aside and ducked, dodging the thick, bluish-black liquid that poured out of its wound. It was about the same weight as a dead chicken, and he launched it off and away. The things became angry and rushed at him. He ran faster than he ever had in his life. They clutched his legs, scratching. He picked off their heads with his blade, and his jeans would become soaked with dark slime and his own cold blood from his cut up legs. He reached with his blade as if to scratch his back and stabbed at the throat of one devil, to save the tearing of his own neck. He kicked and he stomped.
He felt sick as if in a fevered trance as he kept hearing voices that would cause his heart to beat in frantic rhythms and his breathing would feel uneven. He was hyperventilating.
“You gonna blow up the school, commando!” a kid once said to him, when Byron was a High School freshman and wore a camouflage army jacket. His hair was in a crew cut and he was a soldier at war with his inner self and he couldn’t find the little boy anymore.
He felt it all over again. The kids bullied. He remembered. They teased him in the gym, while he undressed, and was pale, skinny and awkward. He knew that when he turned his back they would spank his butt with something, so he walked down the hallways in fear, always having that tingle in his back thinking they would sneak up behind him.
His teachers didn’t care why a boy with intelligence and potential was refusing his schoolwork. It wasn’t important to know. It wasn’t their problem. He didn’t do the work, he didn’t get the grades, and he didn’t pass. They took no notice to the boy who wanted to be noticed; because he was just another kid not doing his homework-they didn’t care why.
The thoughts swarmed his head like an approaching migraine while Byron ran for his life slaying demons down the stony corridor.
“Don’t you see how much of a burden it is, that I have to shift things around in my own life… I was in the middle of dinner with someone…”
his father told him in the car, when he was sixteen and had to be picked up from a party.
his father told him in the car, when he was sixteen and had to be picked up from a party.
Byron felt guilty all over again. His guilt became anger and he continued to wave his sword about like a madman, killing as many creatures as he could. His father had a social life, and his mother wanted him in his life.
“Do you want me in your life or not? Don’t you want your mother in your life anymore?” he heard Mom cry.
He was a confused teenager, with so many mixed up emotions inside, and unable to decide between parents. They had joint custody and he was to spend equal amounts of time with them.
They argued about his school situation. He wanted to quit and his mother consented. His father objected. Byron made his own decision and ran away to live with his mother, but she couldn’t afford to keep him unless she moved out of the apartment she lived in, and found a cheaper living situation. Byron felt more guilt inside, because it was his fault she had to give up her apartment. It was all-his fault they had to live in a dirt heap of a trailer.
I just wanted to be noticed.
It’s all-my fault.
I’m invisible.
I’m to blame.
It was the walls. The voices came from behind the walls and he had to leave. He had to find the end, but he wouldn’t get there in time-not while he was using up all his energy fighting. Drown it all! Byron thought to himself, as he struggled to break from the demons.
His arm was aching from the hard labor of whirling about his sword. His mind was a blur, throbbing with pain, so he shut up his mind. He felt a tingle, sensing the flow of water coming up from the drain it was hiding under. It was trying to find him like a lost cat-like a Witch’s familiar answering a call.
Byron felt his body rise. Time seemed to slow down as he levitated and with his bare hand he grabbed the creature that hung by his pant-leg and as he tossed it, it made a splash and the corridor was successfully flooded. Byron hung suspended over the water and swam in the empty air. He could see his reflection once more and not only was his hair long, but he was physically fit and healthy.
He sped up and wasn’t sure how to stop himself from crashing into the metal bar which shined ahead. He held back his sword and reached with his left hand. His fingers grasped the bar tight and while the water sank down he was released from suspension. He feared he would fall as his sword weighed him down, but he held.
Byron looked up and he was holding onto a ladder that led upward as in a sewer. He placed his sword in his belt. He stopped and breathed. He reached with his right arm and he crept up. His feet rested on a lower rung and as he clung to the ladder he rested and caught breath again.
He pulled himself up one rung at a time and it wasn’t long before he reached the top rung and found himself in the middle of what seemed to be a cellar. The room was all cement with cobwebbed walls and an old lantern swung about by a rope from the rafters in the ceiling.
Byron climbed up from the ladder; out of the hole he was in and stood looking around. Behind him was a door and he saw it as he turned his head, but straight in front of him was a large rectangular window. It wasn’t too far above him that he couldn’t leap to it. He could see the clouds of the night sky. Freedom was behind it. He had a good feeling that he may have reached the end point of his nightmare odyssey.
Behind the glass and the thick film of dirt were wispy clouds of gray like smoke in the blackness of the infinite sky. Byron jumped with one arm raised, as if reaching to dunk a basketball. His fingers could barely grip the concrete sill and he slipped. He propelled himself with both arms up and he dangled. His feet were raised about a foot from the ground. It would take a great deal of upper body strength for him to pull up.
His face scrunched and he turned red. He felt his teeth grind in his head. He was inching up, slowly. He held one foot against the wall, then the other. He took several deep breaths and counted down from three and with a sudden jolt he hoisted himself up onto the sill, groaning in pain. He sat and balanced on the sill. He stroked the warm muscles in his arms. He was surprised that there even was hard warm muscle to massage, for in his waking life he was mostly bone. He nearly fell causing his heart to skip a beat, but he clutched at the edges of the window.
Byron was crouched in the far corner, his butt resting on the five inches of sill, his head tilted, one arm holding the top for dear life and the other pressed against the glass to see if it could budge. He could barely feel his arm anymore. It was an extremely difficult task but he managed to push the window open a crack, then another push creaked it out more until it was open an inch. He lunged with his body and suddenly he rolled, feeling cold wind and hearing the whispers of the breeze.
He stopped himself as he felt his body slide from a rocky edge and laying on the edge he could see downward. His arm clung to the side of a cliff and miles downward he saw a crashing river that would destroy him if he were to fall. He removed his sword from his belt, rolled away from the edge, and stood.
He stood on the small ledge of the cliff and there was no way up but down. The castle rested atop the cliff. Its dungeon was within the hollow rock. He would never be able to climb. There was not one bit of energy left within him. He felt the handle of his sword slide from his fingers out of his hand attached to his numb arm.
He watched it, its steel still shining as it tumbled and tossed against the rocks. The river devoured it. It was eaten up and taken away by it. Byron turned his back. He looked up and could almost see the walls of the castle, but it was too far up.
Byron closed his eyes.
His body fell at a great speed. His heart stopped as if a great knife had stabbed it, then by a miracle he felt it start back up again and felt the impact of a hard surface on his back.
His eyes jerked open and he realized that the hard surface was a mattress. He gave a low shriek. He felt confused and disoriented and when he sat up he felt dizzy. He was drenched, his blankets soaked from his sweat. He noticed he was still wearing his work clothes and that he was thin again. He felt his dripping hair and it was short. He was back to the way he was before the dream, but not quite back to normal, because he hadn’t been himself in years.
Byron turned his head to look at the clock on the VCR, on his TV stand and it was 2am on the dot. He stood and went over to the armoire in the corner where he kept his clothes. He took off his shirt and tossed it in the blue laundry basket by his feet. He opened the armoire doors to find a fresh shirt. All that was there were blank t-shirts.
He gave all his clothes to goodwill and for the first time in years he had wondered why. He donated the extra large Kurt Cobain T-shirt his brother gave him (the one which was so long it reached his knees). The Led Zeppelin tee that used to be Rob’s was gone and his Aerosmith shirt was amongst the missing as well. He tried to understand and make some sense of it. It might have had something to do with his brother Ian who was shunned by everyone in the family for being immature (in their words). Maybe he wanted to be accepted by his dad’s new wife, who was very straight and conservative. Maybe that’s why he changed. Whatever the reason, he was starting to see it was a mistake. He would always be the little brother of a punk musician.
He grabbed a red shirt and a pair of jeans and got dressed. He picked up his pack of cigarettes and his lighter and put them in his pocket. He put on his sneakers. If he left his room, to shower, or to go out the back door to smoke, he’d make noise. Noise was forbidden. He cracked open his bedroom window and leaped out landing in the bushes. He stood up and climbed the wall, stepping on the windowsill, for a brief second being reminded of his dream. He made his way up to the garage roof.
The moon was full and stars were scattered all around. Byron lit a smoke. He was alone, while the chirping of crickets filled his ears like a song. He could even hear the crackling of ash as he inhaled and watched the tip of his cigarette glow. It was comforting to feel the filter grow hot under his lips, like a kiss and it was the closest thing he’d get to a kiss. It would have been nice to feel the cold sweet lips of the opposite sex rather than to breathe in toxic fumes-but it was all he had.
It was always nice to escape the entrapments he found himself in. It was nice to walk the empty streets at midnight when he worked late and it was nice to sit outside on the roof listening to the symphony of crickets. He listened in his private seat to the orchestra of chirps they played for him and they were joined by a scratching sound like pen on paper followed by a sniffle.
Byron turned around and saw in the distance a figure in a tree in the backyard of the house behind him. He turned his body all the way around.
He saw the top of her head and her hair was an earthy brown that matched the bark on the branch that obscured her partially. A gray cotton t-shirt held in her breasts which seemed to dance to the rhythm of her breathing like ocean waves. Her slim fingers held a pen, black to match the paint in her nails and moving about along the pages of her diary. The notebook, which was graffiti-ed and decorated with stickers, was propped up on her thighs as she sat with her knees up in her purple-checkered pajama pants. Her face was splashed with tears from her sore eyes. They were green, he noticed even in the dark shadows. She looked up at him and saw that his pale blue eyes were illuminated in the starlight. She craned her head up to see above the branch and get a better look at the skinny boy on the roof.
No comments:
Post a Comment